There's even more good news. The feds will be buying mass marking trailers for Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The new program requires that all fish produced in federal hatcheries for harvest be fin-clipped as well as all fish produced in hatcheries that get federal money. That isn't the case currently.

On top of that, biologists I've talked to say that part of the reason for the increase in salmon/steelhead stocks is a decadal oscillation in the Pacifc-- read that a cycle-- where we've experienced the crash and now we're rebuilding populations.

That doesn't mean we can forget the stewardship-- it just means that stewardship projects (habitat, etc.) will have better rewards.

However, the oscillation will probably swing back the other way in 15 years-- that might be a good time to retire to Florida...